Tag Archives: aljarreau

We were sitting high up behind the stage with a great view of two of the great modern American drummers: Steve Gadd (with Sanborn) and Ricky Lawson (with Jarreau). To be honest, my parents and I left in the middle of Al’s set but Sanborn was fantastic with Marcus Miller and Hiram Bullock running amok on the huge Arena stage. The saxophonist was at his commercial peak here and probably could have headlined the show.

Marc Almond @ The Palladium, 12th October 1986

I have absolutely no memory of why I was at this gig but it was a genuine eye-opener. Almond was long past his pop fame and seemed to be acting out his own private, Berlin-inspired drama. Looking at the footage today, I’m still not sure if it’s brilliant or total sh*te.

Miles Davis @ Hammersmith Odeon, 21st April 1982

I remember someone shouting ‘Turn the guitar down!’ Poor Mike Stern wasn’t the critics’ flavour of the month and Miles was obviously exceptionally ill, but the gig was unforgettable. One of my first and very best. I saw Miles three or four times during the ’80s but this was the bomb for sheer atmosphere and occasion.

Robert Palmer @ Hammersmith Odeon, 25th September 1988

There really isn’t anyone around these days like the much-missed Robert with his gravelly voice, weirdly cosmopolitan compositions and ever-present smirk. He had a highly-drilled, sh*t-hot band with him at the Hammie Odeon too featuring Frank Blair on bass and Eddie Martinez on guitar. The gig started with a five-minute Dony Wynn drum solo which fair blew the minds of my brother and I.

Yes/No People @ Limelight, 9th September 1986

I think this gig was part of what was then known as the Soho Jazz Festival. There was a lively crowd of ‘jazz revival’ hipsters and rare-groove fans – this was my first taste of an underground scene that was quickly building momentum. DJ Baz Fe Jazz kicked off with some Blue Note post-bop (yes, people actually danced to that stuff) and then Yes/No People featured Steve Williamson on sax and the cracking Mondesir brothers (Mark and Mike) rhythm section. The band only lasted a year or so but nearly dented the charts with their ‘Mr Johnson’ single.

The sign on the door said ‘Billy Cobham will not be appearing’ – heartbreaking to me at the time (McLaughlin apparently dumped Billy just a week before the tour). But Danny Gottlieb sat in with some style and John rattled off some outstanding licks in black shirt and black headband. It was bloody loud too. It was the first time many British fans had seen him since Mahavishnu Mark 1 days and as such there was a big hippie turnout.

Bill Withers @ Hammersmith Odeon, 18th September 1988

From memory, Bill spent most of the gig sitting at the front of the stage, talking about his life and career while Pieces Of A Dream accompanied with gentle jazz/funk. Bill wore a sweater and golfing slacks and seemed incredibly old, more Val Doonican than Curtis Mayfield.

Weather Report @ Dominion Theatre, 26th June 1984

The duels between keys man Zawinul and drummer Omar Hakim were spellbinding. This was clearly the dog’s b*ll*cks. Well, it was better than Duran Duran anyway. Omar’s huge shades, trash-can cymbal and big grin linger in the memory.

Level 42 @ Wembley Arena, 12th January 1989

Level again, but this time for all the wrong reasons. We were in the back row of the dreaded Arena, and the band were flogging their substandard Staring At The Sun album. The audience reaction to the ‘new stuff’ was distinctly subdued. After a contractually-obliged encore of ‘Chinese Way’, Mark King returned to the stage alone. ‘You ‘ad a good night?’ he bawled. The audience erupted. ‘Well, you can all go and f**k off home then’, deadpanned the thunder-thumbed one. Reply – and further encore – came there none…

Pop music has always featured its fair share of brilliantly ‘inappropriate’ instrumental solos, from the (uncredited) honking tenor break on Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers’ ‘Why Do Fools Fall In Love’ and Tony Peluso’s brilliant fuzz-guitar feature on The Carpenters’ ‘Goodbye To Love‘ to Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter’s unreconstructed rampage through Donna Summer’s ‘Hot Stuff’.

And then of course there are the jazz solos that occasionally enhance ‘pop’ material – Sonny Rollins lighting up the Stones’ ‘Waiting On A Friend’, Ronnie Ross’s memorable break on Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ and Phil Woods/Wayne Shorter/Pete Christlieb’s tasty leads on some of Steely Dan’s best work.

In the ’80s, there was a lot of demand for the wacky solo, often thrown in to pep up some pretty light/fairly inconsequential material. One in particular really set the benchmark for the decade, and it’s naturally where we start our rundown…

6. Michael Jackson – ‘Beat It’ (Solo by Eddie Van Halen)

Eddie’s shock-and-awe break was a perfect distillation of all his trademark techniques: lightning-fast picking, close-interval tapping routines, whammy-bar divebombs and even a cheeky Jimi Hendrix ‘All Along The Watchtower’ homage.

5. Michael Sembello – ‘Maniac’ (1983)

Sembello, hitherto best known as a very able jazz/R’n’B session player for the likes of Stevie Wonder, David Sanborn and George Duke, unleashed this overblown post-‘Beat It’ solo (starting at 2:50) which sounds like it belongs to a completely different song. Maybe he should have stuck to the jazz and R’n’B…

4. Bros – ‘Chocolate Box’ (Solo by Paul Gendler)

Gendler was a respected UK-based session player (and member of Modern Romance!) before getting the call from the Goss boys. He tosses off a Francis Dunnery-esque, way-too-good-for-the-charts solo at 2:40 on this wafer-thin but very catchy single.

3. Europe – ‘The Final Countdown’ (Solo by John Norum)

This song is obviously crying out for a widdly guitar solo, but Norum’s brilliant Malmsteen-esque playing (starting at 3:17) goes beyond the call of duty even by the standards of a mid-’80s hair-metal band.

2. Al Jarreau – ‘Telepathy’ (Solo by Nile Rodgers)

Nicely set up by Steve Ferrone’s wrongfooting half-bar drum fill, Nile plays all the notes he knows and a few more too in this seriously weird but rather brilliant harmonized/double-tracked break (starting at 2:05) from the L Is For Lover album.

1. Allan Holdsworth – ‘In The Mystery’ (1985)

Jazz/rock guitar genius Holdsworth inexplicably saved some of his wackiest solos for vocal-based, ‘commercial’ material. This one, starting at 2:20, is fairly astonishing and, arguably, totally wasted on the song… (Bassist Jimmy Johnson also deserves a mention for his frenetic, Red-Bull-sponsored performance.)

So it’s official – Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke ripped off Marvellous Marvin’s ‘Got To Give It Up‘ when they wrote ‘Blurred Lines‘ in just one hour (though Thicke denies having any input into the writing of the song).

Trumpet player, composer and blogger Nicholas Payton has written eloquently and passionately about the whys and wherefores of the ‘Blurred Lines’ case here. I won’t go into whether I think that verdict is just; suffice it to say that I dig what Mr Payton says, right down the line.

But what’s interesting is that Pharrell seems to have previous. Let’s investigate the track ‘Roller Rink’ from Kelis’s great 1999 album Kaleidoscope which, according to the credits, Pharrell co-wrote with Chad Hugo and Kelis.

Now compare that with ‘No Ordinary Love’, credited to Michael Gregory Jackson, which features on Gregory Jackson’s 1983 album Situation X and also Al Jarreau’s L Is For Lover from 1986, both produced by Nile Rodgers:

Weird. Kelis/Pharrell/Chad haven’t even bothered to change key. They’ve just ‘replayed’ Gregory Jackson’s original with a slightly different arrangement. Their version comes up with a better melody in the verses though the chorus melody just uses the catchy little synth motif from both Gregory Jackson and Jarreau versions.

Michael Gregory Jackson circa 1983

Michael Gregory Jackson started out as a first-call guitarist in the New York avant-garde jazz scene in the mid-’70s. Later in the decade, he reinvented himself as a singer-songwriter and did a pretty job of it, his 1987 solo album What To Where getting rave reviews in Q Magazine and a few other influential rags at the time. But commercial success eluded him.

Regarding ‘Roller Rink’/’No Ordinary Love’, maybe Gregory Jackson was just easy to push over. After all, he’s jazz. Maybe they did settle out of court. But you’d think at least a songwriting credit might be in order. I wonder how much income Gregory Jackson has lost out on, even though Kaleidoscope wasn’t a huge hit album and ‘Roller Rink’ wasn’t a single.

I haven’t checked to see if subsequent versions of the CD have different credits but my 1999 Kaleidoscope CD credits state that the track was ‘written by K Rogers/P Williams/C Hugo’ with no mention of sample permissions etc. The album’s Wikipedia page says the same thing.

About eight years ago, I made some routine enquiries to Virgin Publishing but didn’t get anywhere. Anyway, it’s only music, there are only 12 notes, etc etc. But who knows what other examples are out there? I’ll be listening closely in the future to Neptunes tracks and Pharrell solo tracks, co-productions and co-writes, many of which I’m unfamiliar with at this point.